Just curious if this has happened to any other 5.5 owners.

My pulley started getting noisy about a week ago. While I was waiting to get it into the shop i was still driving it to work. So 2 days later I was doing about 80 or 90 and heard a loud clunk followed by my battery light and brake lights coming on -- figured it was my alternator that had taken a dump.

Anyway, I limp into the shop and pop the hood and my idler pulley is GONE, missing, not even there. The tensioner part is sitll there but the pulley is gone and my belt is just riding slack. I walked back out to the service road and found the metal backing plate that sits behind the pulley, and that was it.

Is this a known issue for VQ35's? I have 70,xxx miles and the serp. belt on it had 20k miles. I replaced tensioner, pulley and belt this time.

 

holy crap. i have never heard of that. wow. um was it a stock pulley or an aftermarket one.

 

Totally stock.

I'm thinking the nut holding the pulley onto the tensioner bolt may have vibrated loose and started backing out little by little until it finally spun off.

 

137k and never had that happen!

 

Wow... Interesting problem. Never heard of it happening b4

 

There is a bolt that holds the pulley onto the tensioner frame. Was there any sigh that this bolt either strippid or fell out. I'm going to check mine since I installed a UDP a few weeks ago. Clearly don't want the same situation.